Shafiq has a hand on my shoulder. “Salahudin—step back, man. Step away. It’s not worth it.”

  “It is worth it,” I say. “Why did you open your door to him? Can’t you see what it must feel like for her?”

  But maybe they can’t. Even I don’t understand. Noor lives the nightmare every day. She can’t wake up. And she can’t escape.

  “Be reasonable.” Riaz moves toward Noor. “We can figure this out. What choice do you have? You’re not going to UVA or UCLA or any other—”

  He’s a cobra flaring its hood, trying to fill the vision of his prey. I step in front of him.

  Khadija holds up her phone. “I don’t want to call the cops. You both need to leave.”

  “Not until he’s gone.” I glare at Riaz.

  “Just go.” Noor’s dropped her arms. Her hands are fisted and she looks between Riaz and me. “Both of you,” she says. “I don’t want to see you again, Chachu. Ever—”

  “Noor, I raised you. I saved you. I’m the only reason you’re standing—”

  “I know, Chachu,” she says. “And I’ve paid for it. I’ve paid. Leave.”

  He stands there a moment longer, scrambling for any way to exert control over Noor. Then he shrugs.

  “Don’t come looking for your things,” he says. “You earn your own way now. See how easy it is.”

  When he’s slammed his car door and driven off, I hear a light step behind me. I turn to face Noor.

  “Noor,” I say. “Could I talk to you? Just for a minute—”

  Sorry, I was going to say. But her face is closed, eyes blazing in rage.

  “You’re worse than him.” Her whisper feels like a shout. “I knew what he was. But you—”

  My heart cracks, slow internal tectonics that grind my hope into nothingness. She’s not going to forgive me, I realize then. Ever.

  “Noor—I’m an idiot and I didn’t mean for it to be this way. I—I understand if you can’t forgive me. But can—can I call you?” I can fix this. I have to. “Or text—”

  “You can go to hell.”

  For a second she meets my eyes and I flinch back. Beneath her rage, there’s something even worse. Pain.

  And betrayal.

  chapter 47

  Noor

  The first song I fell in love with in America was called “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” by the Smashing Pumpkins. I’d listened to a lot of music by then. But “Bullet” spoke to my soul from the first bass riff to the last. Billy Corgan was so angry. So thwarted. His rage had no place to go. He was trapped with it.

  Just like me.

  That song helped me when I was angry. It helped me calm down. I wish I could hear it now.

  But the cops took my phone and my computer and I don’t have my music anymore. I’m not going to school, which means I can’t listen to it on the library computers. So in the days after my arrest, my anger doesn’t cool. I’m not sure I want it to.

  A few days after I get to Imam Shafiq’s house, on a Wednesday, I have an unexpected visitor. Ashlee McCann.

  She’s holding a stack of papers in her hands. “Sal asked me to—oh shit.”

  I’d opened the door without thinking. Too late I remember the bruise on my face. It’s faded. But not enough.

  Ashlee looks green. “Your uncle?”

  I try to say yes. My mouth won’t make the word.

  “You’re the only one who didn’t think it was Salahudin,” I finally say.

  She comes up the porch steps. Ashlee always seemed tall to me. But now she’s different. Despite the perfect makeup and glittering silver nails, she feels smaller. Faded.

  “Sal would never.” She hands me the papers. “He’s been collecting your homework. He asked me to drop it off. Hope that’s okay.”

  I don’t want to take the packet. I don’t want to touch something he’s touched.

  “I heard about the arrest.” Ashlee drops her arm when I don’t grab the homework. “My aunt works down at the police station. You planning on coming back to school?”

  School sounds about as appealing as the county jail. Khadija thinks I should go back. But even thinking about it makes me sick to my stomach.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  We stand together without speaking. I don’t know Ashlee at all, so it should be weird, but it’s not. I wonder if she’s thinking what I am—that it’s a shame I didn’t know her before. That I could have used a friend.

  “I’m . . . afraid to go back,” I say. “Afraid of people knowing what happened and . . . I don’t know. Saying things.”

  “Yeah, they will.” Ashlee takes out a cigarette and lights up. “But they don’t know what happened. And if they do, you don’t have to confirm it.” She takes a long drag, and gives me an appraising look. “I overdosed the day before you got arrested.”

  I hear the synth beats of “Never Let Me Down Again” by Depeche Mode popping in my head. Almost a decade after that song came out, Dave Gahan barely survived an overdose.

  “Doc said I only recovered because the paramedics got Narcan into me so quick,” Ashlee says. “I was all ready to get a few days off school. But my mom told me I was going back come Monday morning. Said that if I didn’t graduate, what would I be teaching Kaya?”

  “Did you go?”

  “Yeah. I’m glad I did. My daughter—she’s two, right? My mom watches her. Insists that she get up at the same time every day, eat at the same time, and nap at the same time. At first, I thought my mom was a tyrant.” Ashlee smiles. “But routine helps me, too. Especially when withdrawal hits.” She shoves the homework at me again. This time, I take it.

  “Come back,” she says. “It’ll be a distraction. If you’re worried about the bruise, I’ll teach you how to cover it up really well.”

  “Your makeup’s always beautiful.”

  “It’s armor.” Ashlee shrugs as she walks away. “Makes the world and all its bullshit feel farther away.”

  * * *

  A few mornings later, over the weekend, Brooke drops off my clothes. She doesn’t stop to talk. Khadija opens the door and finds the shitty blue suitcase Chachu got for two dollars at the Juniper swap meet and a Budweiser box full of random things from my room.

  It’s clear from what’s in there—an eleventh grade science book, a bracelet I’ve never worn, a pair of low heels that don’t fit—that Brooke was in a hurry. And that she knows me about as well as she knows the president.

  But there’s a cheap new phone, along with my old wired headphones. Music, I think. Finally.

  Khadija drags the suitcase in. “Good thing she didn’t knock,” she says. “Or I’d have given her a—”

  “Anger is a sin,” Imam Shafiq calls from the kitchen.

  “Then God shouldn’t have put so much of it inside me,” Khadija retorts. Shafiq laughs.

  There’s such understanding between them that I have to look away. I wonder what it’s like to be with someone who can love you through your rage.

  Though I suppose I do know what it’s like. Or I did. For a few hours.

  I take my stuff to my room and stick it in a corner with the growing pile of unfinished schoolwork. When I come back out, Khadija touches my shoulder.

  “Come have breakfast,” she says. “There’s something we need to discuss.”

  Imam Shafiq sets out a bunch of mismatched Corelle plates that can be found in pretty much every South Asian household in America. He’s made waffles. But not Ronnie D’s box waffles, which are the only kind I’ve ever had. These are fluffy. Golden. Crispy, too. They have bits of pecan in them.

  They’re bribery waffles. As soon as I take a bite, I know whatever Khadija has to say, I’m not going to like it. I head her off.

  “I was thinking that since I’m not going back to school,” I say, “I could get my GED.”

  Khadija puts another waffle on my plate and exchanges a glance with Imam Shafiq.

  “I was thinking it might be time for you to go back to school on Monday,” she says. “Your face is nearly healed up. And there’s only five weeks until graduation.”

  I shrug. My grades don’t mean shit. “I’d rather get my GED,” I say. “I’m stuck in Juniper anyway.”

  “Noor.” Shafiq puts down his fork. “You’ve worked so hard. We talked to Principal Ernst. He wants you back. But—”

  “There’s no point.” I’m not hungry anymore. “I didn’t get into any of the colleges I applied to. Even if I had—they’re not going to let me in with a felony on my record.”

  “AP tests start week after next,” Khadija says. “Those classes count as college credit—you could finish coursework at Juniper Community within a year and transfer.”

  “You’ve only been out of school a week,” Shafiq adds. “I spoke to your teachers. Most of them said it was just a review week.”

  “Will—will Salahudin—”

  “He won’t bother you. I spoke to him.” Shafiq’s voice is curiously neutral. Which is close as he’ll get to anger, I guess. It’s strangely comforting.

  “He won’t talk to you,” Khadija says. “But you should get used to seeing him, Noor. You guys have pretrial, a preliminary hearing, another arraignment, and a trial to get through.”

  “Does he have a lawyer? Is he—”

  “Let Sal worry about Sal. You worry about you.”

  So easy to say. I wish I could extract him. Rip him out from my heart like a weed.

  Instead, I think about him in prison. About his kindness. His awful puns. The poetry of his body. How will he survive in there?

  Let Sal worry about Sal.

  “Going back to school will make an impact on the judge if you graduate with good grades,” Khadija says. “That kind of thing might make them think twice about the felony charge, Noor.”

  I can’t just say no to them. Khadija’s representing me. They’re letting me live in their spare bedroom. Shafiq has prayed with me at two a.m., when I can’t sleep because I feel like the world is crushing me the way it tried to in the earthquake.

  But going back to school means facing stares and gossip and whispers when the only thing I ever wanted was to fly under the radar and then get the hell out of Juniper High.

  I wish it didn’t bother me so much. I wish I could explain why it does. But, as ever, I can’t find the words.

  chapter 48

  Misbah

  Then

  For years, I did not understand why my father hid his illness from me.

  As I stared at a sheet of paper that made no sense in a cold doctor’s office, I understood. My father did not have the words. They stuck in his throat the way mine did, as if I’d eaten too much naan and couldn’t find water.

  Baba never even went to the doctor. He died with startling swiftness when Salahudin was only ten. No more wisdom given over too-short phone calls. No more entreaties to return home. No more “little butterfly.” He left me. As did my mother soon after.

  Doctors didn’t help them. Or me. I had my blood work done. Waited anxiously to see why I could not get enough breath into this body. Why, at only forty-one and with a son of sixteen, I felt as if my bones were lined with lead and fire.

  “Chronic kidney disease,” the doctor said. “Quite advanced, Mrs. Malik. Stage four. You have to make significant changes to your lifestyle. It is something we can control; however, I’d like to discuss transplant options—”

  “No.” I shook my head. My English always fled me in moments like that. All language did. “No transplant.” I left, even as the doctor called out behind me. We had no insurance. We could not afford a transplant. Toufiq was sober, making a small salary as a contractor at Juniper’s base. He had not had a drink for two years by then, but it was a tenuous hold on sobriety. God knew what he would do if he learned how ill I was.

  My baba was right all those years ago, when he said I was strong. Between Toufiq and me, I carried the lion’s share of the courage.

  But Toufiq was often preoccupied with work. If I did not wish him to see, he wouldn’t. Nor would Salahudin, busy with his books and writing and soccer and Noor. He had built order into his life. Structure. He didn’t often see much outside that.

  But Noor was different. Noor saw.

  “Auntie Misbah.” She had come over a few months after that first appointment to see Salahudin, but she wandered into the kitchen and started helping me make dinner.

  “Maybe you should go to the doctor.” Her voice was quiet and she reminded me of the redwoods in Yosemite. Strong and stoic, demanding little, offering much. “I’ve been researching. I talked to a nephrologist at the hospital. He said that sometimes when a person is tired the way you are, there is something wrong.”

  I met Noor’s gaze as she observed me. Her eyes imparted calm like a river at a gentle ebb.

  But I knew her.

  The quickness of her hands when she tipped the onions into the pan—the way she jumped at the steam that curled up, the curve of her shoulders—they all spoke of her fear for me.

  In my eyes, she was still six. Looking at a stack of crisp, flaky paratha I made just for her with hopeful, hungry eyes, her hair in messy braids. Whispering in Punjabi to me, because Riaz had made her too afraid to speak any louder.

  She was not of my body or my blood, this child. But she was of my soul.

  And she had enough fear in her life. I gave her the smile my son inherited, and a kiss on the cheek.

  “Do not worry about me, Dhi. I’m fine.”

  chapter 49

  Sal

  May, now

  Everything is shit. I don’t want to go to school, but Martin saved me from expulsion, and he insists.

  “Head down, mouth shut,” he says. “Don’t miss a single class.”

  So two days after I get home, I drag myself back to Juniper High. Before my ass can warm the seat, Principal Ernst pulls me out of English and into his office, glaring at me like I’m one Molotov cocktail away from burning down the place.

  After a twenty-minute speech that ranges from “How could you throw away your future?” to “If you carry out any illegal activity on campus, you will be instantly expelled,” I’m ejected back to Mrs. Michaels’s class.

  Where I can’t pay attention. Mostly because everyone is whispering behind my back like we’re in some dank high school movie.

  But school is better than being at home. Abu has descended again, so swiftly that it’s as if the few sober days he had were a dream.

  Can’t you just be my father? I want to ask. Can’t you stop drinking for me? Don’t you love me enough?

  God, I’m pathetic. I read up on all of this after the pool incident, when Ama finally told me Abu had a drinking problem. I know addiction isn’t logical. Abu loves me. But right now, his need for oblivion is greater than that love. Until he can change himself, that’s how it’s going to stay.

  Intellectually, I get it. Emotionally, I’m a sullen third grader.

  And Noor—I miss her so much. I can’t sleep, wondering if she’ll come back to school. If she’s safe from Riaz. I try to write down all of it, to get the guilt and fear and worry out of me, but when I open my journal, the words skitter out of reach.

  The cops took our phones, and I think of all the music she had on hers. Weird bootlegs she got from old CDs and live concert recordings. I wonder how she’s listening to music now.

  The pretrial is the first I see of Noor after the incident with Riaz. Martin and I are already seated when she enters, Khadija by her side. My friend moves even more carefully in the world than she did before. When she sees me, the muscles in her jaw jump, but Khadija whispers something and she relaxes.

  “Salaam, Salahudin,” Khadija says. Her voice is soft, and she brushes her hand lightly against my shoulder. “Could you switch seats with Martin, please?”

  So Noor can be as far away from me as possible. Words aren’t quite working for me. I nod and move so that Khadija and Martin are between us.

  “Don’t look at her,” Martin murmurs. “Try not to think about her. Your future is on the line. The prosecutor there is Mike Mahoney. He might look like a kindly grandpa who carves toys for orphans, but he’s watching every move you make.”

  The judge enters, and while Khadija and Martin discuss motions and timetables, I try not to stare at Noor. Or wonder what she’s thinking. But every shift in her body crackles through me like lightning. The way she clenches her fists when Mr. Mahoney refers to her as Ms. Riaz—she’s always hated her uncle’s name. The play of emotions on her face, the frustration rippling through her limbs. I am a ship in her sea, tossed in the storm of her mind, her ever-shifting body. Broken apart, drowned, resurrected, and destroyed a dozen times over in the space of a few minutes.

  After the hearing, Martin sits on a bench with me outside the courthouse.

  “The DA’s offered a plea deal,” he says. “And you need to take it. It means implicating Noor, but if you don’t take it, you’re looking at years behind bars. We could argue that you were using and the judge might be more lenient—but I’d rather not risk it.”

  “I’m not screwing Noor over.”

  “The amount found under her seat—under her backpack—it’s not looking good for her. But that might help you out. The quantities the cops found on you were much smaller. If you’d just—”

  I give him a death glare. “We do not pin this on her.”

  “Salahudin.” Martin rubs his eyes, and despite his youth, he looks suddenly tired. “My job is to defend you. Even if it hurts your friend. Because you can still have a life, Salahudin. But short of drastic intervention? Noor Riaz is going to prison. The DA’s decided she’s guilty. The faster you accept that, the better your chances are of saving yourself.”